You can ignore these power supply calculates wattage needs to be balanced with what each rail can provide. Both of these calculators spec my shuttle higher than the power supply (240w) and people are running much bigger rigs than min of 240w.

SpotTheCat wrote:it doesn't even have most of the newer stuff though. It doesn't stress quality over quantity either

One would imagine that if a PSU says that it can handle 15A on the 12V rail, that that means that it can support at least 180 watts of usage at once on that rail. The discrepancy with the cheap brands lies in the fact that this is more of a maximium, not a minimum.
</large generalization>

Wow, I calculated 278W under full load, but my actual power meter under load reads 160W.
When the CPU manufacturer lists power requirments, it must be absolute peak power which I think you would be hard-pressed to replicate. Under load my AMD64 X44200+ is only requiring 38W with two instances of folding running, while the calculator lists 110W. While folding probably doesn't stress all parts of the CPU, folding must be a fairly good stress test.

liquidsquid wrote:Wow, I calculated 278W under full load, but my actual power meter under load reads 160W.When the CPU manufacturer lists power requirments, it must be absolute peak power which I think you would be hard-pressed to replicate. Under load my AMD64 X44200+ is only requiring 38W with two instances of folding running, while the calculator lists 110W. While folding probably doesn't stress all parts of the CPU, folding must be a fairly good stress test.

It still amazes me how much power video cards are using these days.

-LS

Yeah, AMD quote power output as absolute peak, while Intel list it as some kind of "real life" figure.

I've always been supprised at how much difference the various FAH cores have on heat output, almost 10C on my 3000XP.

Never forget that the PSU calculators always use peak power draw values for all your components, which is basically an impossible-to-obtain situation. In any case, the calculator in the 2nd post is what I've been using, it has every component under the sun and options for everything.

There is a fixed amount of intelligence on the planet, and the population keeps growing :(

It would be nice if the site were updated to calculate the latest hardware (CPUs, GPUs, etc). According to UPS software installed on both my boxes the old unit (Old Reliable) uses more wattage (216-232) than the new one (Big Ed Mustafa at 155-164). And that's with a quad-core CPU installed.

I thiNK the difference is the neww box uses all SATA drives which require less power. The old PC uses SATA hard drives too but also one IDE drive and three IDE DVD burners also.